Three things

Two videos and a story that at face value seem to have more to do with gaming than real life.

The first video is the excellent short film “Hyper Reality” by Keiichi Matsuda. More dystopian vision than anything else it shows how gaming theory applied in an augmented reality scenario leaves the user confused and disillusioned.

The second film is the launch trailer for Pokémon Go, which when watched immediately after Hyper Reality is a little unsettling.

And then the story brings it all together. We know that Google have been spending a lot of money on AI, robotics and attempting to tie them together, but Microsoft are about to launch an AI development platform within Minecraft because, they say “teaching a robot to climb a hill in the real world is costly and impractical.”

Minecraft is a game that appeals to a massive demographic, I have to admit we’re a bit addicted to it here. If you’re not a convert, you should search YouTube for videos of some of the mega structures and computers that have been built in the game environment.

Whilst game theory is now a very respected way to teach and impart knowledge, Minecraft will become a test bed for one of the key pillars of the so called third platform. It takes another massive step forward and will make AI commonplace for the generation that will take advantage of the opportunity.

When this becomes mainstream, which it will in the way that accessing social information has become second nature to the post-war generation who guarded secrecy in a way that seems alien to millennials, Keiichi Matsuda’s vision of hyper reality becomes less dystopian and more vision.